“Mind out,” Trey says. “ ’S twisty.”

“This gonna be wide enough for the car?”

“Yeah. Widens out in a bit.”

Even with the windows rolled up, smoke has seeped into the car, thickening the air and catching at the back of Cal’s throat. He forces himself to keep his foot off the accelerator, peering through the windshield for the faint track that weaves erratically between trees, so close that branches scrape the sides of the car. “Where’s this go?”

“Down to the foot of the mountain. Comes out a bit farther from the village. Up by the main road.”

Things dart out of the darkness across the headlight beams, small leaping animals, frantic birds. Cal, his heart jackhammering, slams on the brake every time. Trey hangs on tight against the jolts and the bumpy track. “Left,” she says, when the headlights come up against what looks like a dead-end cluster of trees, and Cal pulls left. He has no idea where he is, or which way he’s facing. “Left,” Trey says again.

Gradually the trees thin and give way to weeds and gorse. The track widens and becomes defined. They’ve left the thick of the smoke behind; the small steadfast lights of windows shine out clearly from the fields below, and the western horizon still has the last faint flush of turquoise. The world is still there. Cal starts to get his bearings back.

“Lena brought me into town today,” Trey says, out of nowhere. “To your man Nealon. I told him I saw no one that night. Just my dad going out.”

“OK,” Cal says, after a second. He manages to find enough spare brain cells to unravel a few of the things that means. “Did he?”

Trey shrugs.

Cal doesn’t have the resources left to put things carefully. “How come you changed your mind?”

“Just wanted to,” Trey says. She stops, like the words took her by surprise. “I wanted to,” she says again.

“Just like that,” Cal says. “Gee, I shoulda guessed. After putting the whole place through all this shit, you woke up this morning and went, ‘Fuck it, I’m bored, I guess I’ll head into town and change my story—’ ”

Trey asks, “You pissed off with me?”

Cal can’t imagine how to even begin answering that. For a minute he thinks he might start laughing like a loon. “God, kid,” he says. “I have no idea.”

Trey gives him a look like he might be losing it. Cal takes a breath and manages to pull himself back together a little bit. “Mostly,” he says, “I’m just glad this whole shitstorm looks like it’s on its way to over and done with. And that you managed not to get yourself fucking killed up there. Everything else is low on my priority list.”

Trey nods like that makes sense. “You reckon my dad made it out?” she asks.

“Yeah. It’s spreading fast, but the way he headed, nothing’s gonna be cut off for a while. He’ll be fine. Guys like him always are.” Cal is done with being nice about Johnny Reddy. He feels he’s gone above and beyond by resisting the temptation to shove the little shit right into the heart of the fire.

They’ve reached the bottom of the mountain. Cal turns onto the road towards the village and tries to breathe deeply. His hands have started shaking so hard he can barely hold the steering wheel. He slows down before he sends them into a ditch.

Trey says, “Where we going?”

“Miss Lena’s,” Cal says. “Your mama and the kids are there already.”

Trey is silent for a second. Then she says, “Can I go to yours?”

Out of nowhere, Cal feels tears prickle his eyes. “Sure,” he says, blinking so he can see the road. “Why not.”

Trey lets out a long sigh. She slouches deeper into her seat, getting comfortable, and turns herself sideways to watch the fire, with the still gaze of a kid on a road trip watching scenery stream by.

—

Lena makes up the spare bed for Sheila and the little ones, and puts bedding on the sofa for Maeve. She helps Sheila bring in all the bags from the car boot, and dig through them for nightclothes and toothbrushes. She finds milk and mugs and biscuits so everyone can have a snack before bed. She doesn’t ring Cal. As soon as he can, he’ll ring her. She keeps her phone in her jeans pocket, where she’ll feel it vibrate no matter how many people are talking. It must be the only phone in Ardnakelty, apart from Sheila’s, that’s not ringing. Once she feels it vibrate and drops everything to grab for it, but it’s Noreen. Lena lets it go to voicemail.

It’s night, but above the mountain, the cloud has a fractious, pulsing orange glow. All the way down here, the air is thick with the insistent smell of burning gorse. Sirens go past, out on the road, and Lena and Sheila pretend not to hear. Lena knows Trey well enough to be certain there must have been a plan. She also knows, from Sheila’s thickening silence as time goes on and Trey doesn’t come, that this wasn’t in it.

Liam is unsettled and bratty, kicking things and climbing on furniture, demanding every ten seconds to know where his daddy is. Neither Lena nor Sheila has attention to spare for him; Sheila has enough to do with Alanna, who refuses to let go of her T-shirt, and Lena, while she empathizes fully with Liam’s mood, is having difficulty not telling him to shut the fuck up. In the end it’s Maeve who takes him in hand, asking Lena for the dogs’ brushes and herding him off to groom them. Neither of them has much of a clue what they’re at, but the dogs are patient, and gradually Liam settles to the rhythm of the job. Lena, passing with towels, sees him asking Maeve something in an undertone, and Maeve shushing him.

When her phone finally rings, Lena almost knocks over a chair getting out the back door. “Cal,” she says, shutting the door behind her.

“We’re at my place. Me and Trey.”

Lena’s knees go loose and she sits down hard on her back step. “That’s great,” she says. Her voice comes out calm and steady. “Any damage done?”

“She twisted her ankle and picked up a few little burns. Nothing to write home about.”

His voice is carefully steady too. Whatever happened up there, it was bad. “That’ll all heal,” Lena says. “Is she eating?”

“We just got home this minute. But yeah, she’s already bitching about how she’s starving. I said I’d fix her something after I called you.”

“Well,” Lena says, “there you go. As long as she’s hungry, I’d say she’s grand, give or take.”

She hears Cal draw a long breath. “She wanted to come here,” he says. “I’ll keep her awhile, if that’s all right with Sheila.”

“You’d better,” Lena says. She takes a deep breath of her own and leans back against the wall. “I’ve nowhere to put her; she’d be sleeping in the bathtub.”

“Their house is good and gone. I don’t know how much besides.”

Lena says, “Sheila reckons Johnny musta dropped a smoke.”

There’s a second of silence. “Johnny was down at the foot of the mountain,” Cal says. “When the fire started.”

Lena hears the layers in his voice, and remembers Mart Lavin saying he’d see to Johnny. “Probably it smoldered away for a while,” she says. “Before it caught.”

Another second’s silence, while Cal takes his turn listening to the unsaid things, and Lena sits in the darkness and the smell of smoke, listening to him listen. “Probably did,” he says. “By the time it’s out, they’re not gonna be able to tell one way or the other.”

“Where’s Johnny now?”

“He’s skipped town. I gave him a little cash, help him get clear. I can’t swear he made it off the mountain, and it’d probably be good if people get the idea he might not have. But from what I could see, he should’ve been OK.”

Lena finds herself relieved, not for Johnny but for Trey, who won’t have to live with the thought that she had a hand in her dad’s death. “About fucking time,” she says.

“Just in time, more like,” Cal says. “Guy was deep in the shit.”

“I know, yeah.”

“With more shit headed his way. The kid told me you and her went to see Nealon.”

Lena can’t tell what he thinks about that. “I was hoping she’d say it to you,” she says. “I wasn’t sure. She was afraid you’d be pissed off with her.”

“Goddamn teenagers,” Cal says, with feeling. “I got so many things to be pissed off about, I can’t even make a start, or I’ll be there all year. What’s bothering me is she won’t tell me what changed her mind. That’s her business, but if anyone gave her any hassle, I’d like to know.”

“No hassle,” Lena says. “She got sense, is all.”

Cal doesn’t ask, which Lena is glad of. The answers could be a burden to him, or a complication, neither of which he needs right now. After a minute he says, “I don’t reckon Johnny killed that guy.”

“Me neither,” Lena says. “But he might as well come in useful, for once in his life.”

They’re looking for each other in the silences, feeling their way. Lena doesn’t want Cal in blank air over the phone. She wants him where she can touch him.

“There’s that,” Cal says. “Not my problem, either way. All I give a damn about is that he’s gone.”

In her mind Lena sees Nealon, the naked triumph swelling in his face. “Back when you were a detective,” she says. “When you knew you were about to get your man. What did it feel like?”

There’s a silence. For a minute she thinks Cal’s going to ask her where the hell that came from. Instead he says, “A relief, mostly. Like I got something fixed that was all messed up. When it stopped feeling that way, that’s when I quit.”

Lena finds herself smiling. She reckons, although she feels no need to share this, that Cal wouldn’t have enjoyed working with Nealon as much as he thinks. “Good call,” she says. “Now Rushborough’s not your problem.”

“Thank Christ,” Cal says. “I gotta go feed the kid. I just wanted to check in first.”

“I’ll be over to you in a bit,” Lena says. “I’ll see this lot settled in bed and show Sheila where to find everything, and I’ll be there.”

“Yeah,” Cal says, on a sudden long breath. “That’d be great.”

As Lena hangs up, Sheila comes quietly out the door and shuts it behind her. “Was that Cal?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Lena says. “Himself and Trey are grand. They’re at his place.”

Sheila catches a breath and lets it out again carefully. She sits down on the step next to Lena. “Well then,” she says. “That’s that sorted.”

There’s a silence. Lena knows Sheila is leaving it deliberately, so that she can ask any questions she might have—as a matter of fairness, since she’s after taking them in. Lena has no questions, or anyhow none to which she wants the answers.

“Johnny’s done a legger,” she says. “Cal gave him a bitta cash. If he’s in luck, everyone’ll think he got caught in the fire.”

Sheila nods. “Then that’s that sorted as well,” she says. She smooths her hands down her thighs.

The sky is as dark as the fields, so that they merge into one unbounded expanse. High amid the black hangs a bright, distorted ring of orange. Billows of smoke, strangely lit from below, heave and churn above it.

“Cal says the house is gone,” Lena says.

“I knew that, sure. It’ll be ashes. I always hated the place anyway.” Sheila tilts back her head to watch the blaze, without expression. “We won’t be under your feet too long,” she says. “Coupla weeks, just. If the aul’ Murtagh place makes it through, I might ask would they let me have that. Or I might come down offa the mountain, for a change. See if Rory Dunne fancies having us in that cottage, instead of doing the Airbnb. Alanna’s starting school next month; I could get a bit of a job for myself.”

“You’re welcome here as long as you need it,” Lena says. “Specially if Maeve and Liam are going to brush those dogs. With the heat this summer, they’ve been shedding enough to make me fitted carpets.”

Sheila nods. “I’ll go in and tell the kids about their daddy,” she says. “They’re worrying. They’ll be upset he’s gone, or Maeve and Liam will anyway, but I’ll tell them at least he’s safe now. They’ll be glad of that.”

“Good,” Lena says. “Someone oughta be.”

Sheila lets out a crack of laughter, and Lena realizes how it sounded. “Ah, stop,” she protests, but she’s laughing as well. “I meant it.”

“I know, yeah, I know you did. And you’re right, o’ course. It’s just the way you said it, like—” They’re both laughing much harder than it deserves, so hard that Sheila has her head down on her knees. “Like it was cleaning a manky toilet, ‘Someone oughta do that—’ ”

“ ‘—but I’m not touching it—’ ”

“Oh, God—”

“Mammy?” Alanna says, in the doorway. She’s bare-legged, wearing an oversized red T-shirt that Lena’s seen on Trey.

“Oh, Jesus,” Sheila says, getting her breath and wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Come here.” She holds out an arm to Alanna.

Alanna stays where she is, baffled and suspicious. “What’s funny?”

“It’s been a long day, is all,” Sheila says. “A long aul’ time. Come here.”

After a moment Alanna curls onto the step, in the crook of Sheila’s arm. “Where’s Trey?”

“At Cal’s.”

“Is she gonna stay there?”

“I don’t know. We’ve a loada things to decide on. We’re only starting out.”

Alanna nods. Her eyes, gazing up at the mountain, are solemn and dreamy.

“Time for bed,” Sheila says. She stands up and, with a grunt of effort, lifts Alanna off the step. Alanna winds her legs around her, still gazing over her shoulder at the fire.

“Come on,” Sheila says, and carries her inside. Lena stays where she is for a while, listening to the sounds of the place full of people getting ready for bed. She has no desire to make the arrangement a long-term one, but just for a few weeks, it feels like a worthwhile thing to have other people in her house again.

—

What with everything that was going on, Trey missed dinner. She’s considerably more concerned about this than about her ankle, which is baseball-sized and purple but doesn’t appear to be broken, or about the spatter of red patches and blisters on her arms where burning flecks settled. Cal, whose hands are still shaking, doesn’t have the wherewithal to cook anything substantial. He straps up the kid’s ankle and makes her a sandwich, and then another one, and finally dumps the bread and various fillings on the table and lets her go to town.

He’s watching her for any number of things, trying to remember every word Alyssa’s said over the years about trauma and delayed reactions and attachment disruption, but for the life of him he can’t see anything worth watching. What the kid mainly looks is hungry, with a large side order of dirty. He would give a lot to know what turned out to be more important to her than her revenge, but he has a growing feeling that that might not be something she’ll ever be willing to share with him.